SITUATION

We are currently processing the feedback from the Release Candidate for the upcoming 1.68 Update (which includes the 64-bit executables). If these final tests come back positive, we intend to release the update to Main-Branch within the next few weeks. In addition, our development team is working on the various DLC listed on our 2016-17 Roadmap, which will bring new assets, playable content, and engine features and other platform improvements.

INTELLIGENCE

We've reached the submission deadline for the #Armachinima Awards. Now it is time for you to help us select the 10 nominees! There are more than 100 videos to watch, and everyone has 3 votes in total to distribute. So grab a drink (or two) and head over to the #Armachinima web page. You can vote, and change your vote, up until the deadline on February 27th, 09:00 CET (GMT+1). Afterwards, the Arma 3 development team will select 3 winners from the nominees. Have fun everyone!

Mudspike.com, a web portal specialized in writing articles on aviation, published an elaborate piece on drones in Arma 3. Taking a detailed look at Arma 3's UAVs, the author describes the handling, armament, and gameplay of these unmanned vehicles. It is certainly an interesting article to read if you are interested in an outsider's perspective on some of the flying mechanics.

OPERATIONS

Some of the new engine features that are being developed in anticipation of the upcoming Jets DLC are starting to surface on Dev-Branch. One of these is Dynamic Loadouts, which allows for in-game customization of a vehicle's armament, which changes the way that airplanes operate in different situations. The ability to select the loadout for each pylon was requested by our community for a long time, and we're glad to finally be able to implement this alongside Jets' new premium assets. You can find the Work-In-Progress documentation on the Community Wiki, and please let us know your feedback on the forums.

Another new platform feature coming alongside the Jets DLC is Datalink, which was also recently added to Dev-Branch. Designer Ondřej KuÅ¾el explains what it is: "Datalink is a new feature that expands the Sensor Overhaul. It allows vehicle operators to automatically transmit and/or receive information about targets to/from other vehicles of the same side." Additionally, new config parameters (receiveRemoteTargets, reportRemoteTargets, reportOwnPosition) will help community content creators to include this new feature in their assets. Head over to the forums to chat with our devs and provide your feedback. It's much appreciated!

That said, not all of the recent additions are directly associated with the Jets DLC. Our developers are working tirelessly on improving the game overall. For example, a new "hasUnderbarrel" weapon animation source has landed to Dev-Branch recently and offers more possibilities for modders. Also, the well-known Dammaged Event Handler was extended with additional arguments (documented on the Community Wiki). Aside from that, the enableEnvironment script command was optimized to work more reliably. Last but not least, Senior Programmer Jakub Horyna fixed a longstanding issue with flags, which now can be used in CTF scenarios in the same way as in the early days of Arma.

LOGISTICS

The Arma 3 Feedback Tracker now allows for logging in via existing accounts like Facebook or Google Account. We hope this will help decrease the barrier of entry for registering and submitting issues. The goal being of course to make Arma 3 even more splendid!

SITUATION

The development team is now preparing a Release Candidate build for public testing. If things go well, we intend to make it available to the community later this week. Internally, we're also very much in the production phase of all of this year's planned additions, which are now all starting to come together nicely.

INTELLIGENCE

The latest Dev Photo shows the commitment of ARMAnet Podcast hosts Reaver and Dagger to present their audience with new episodes. With Bohemia Interactive Project Leads, Petr KolÃ¡ř and Joris-Jan van 't Land, finally making their appearance on the show, the four of them discuss the turbulent history of Arma 3's development, explain some decisions that shaped to become Arma 3 as we know it now, and provide a glimpse into the future of the game and platform. We can recommend subscribing to their show for interesting segments like Units discussions, mod-maker interviews, scenario design tips and all other things Arma 3. Kudos to the podcast crew, and we hope we'll talk again!

Isla Duala[/b], a terrain made by a well-known community modder IceBreakr, has recently been updated on the Steam Workshop! More than 100 square kilometers of African terrain provide more than enough opportunities to discover new kinds of warfare. This update improves the satellite textures, adds particle effects for units, and much more. Splendid work, IceBreakr!

The art of developing animations and editing characters in the Real Virtuality engine is one of the most difficult tasks, both for ourselves and our community. However, practice makes perfect, and so Mondkalb (Animation Lead at Bohemia Interactive Simulations) came up with a rather creative way of tweaking the animation sources and show off his mastery of the tech. The author describes his admirable goals for the release as: "The main reason for this release is to get the sources out for others to learn from. It's a fully independent character setup in Arma 3 using all the things there are. Animations, Ragdoll, Weapons, Clothes Swapping, Head and Face textures, lip movement and of course hats." Watching those yellow-brick toy characters come to life and rag-dolling on Arma 3's terrains is one of the most hilarious (yet educational!) things we've seen in a while!

OPERATIONS

Over the past weeks, the artists in our Team Mike studio have been working on improving the structures on all Arma 3 terrains. With careful attention to detail, our buildings now display shadows and light more realistically by tweaking their Ambient Occlusion configurations. As per usual, we're asking you, the community, to provide us with your feedback. Head over to the respective forums thread for more Intel and do not hesitate to leave a comment.

Some of our players have been reporting an issue where their game performance degrades drastically over time. We've already spent months hunting the infamous '3FPS Issue'. The process has led to various improvements and fixes, but we have not yet been able to find the full cure. Project Lead Petr KolÃ¡ř asks the community for help on the forums once more: "As we are yet unable to reproduce said behavior on our internal machines, we need your help to crush this issue. There is a Feedback Tracker ticket about this issue, we would like to ask anyone experiencing said behavior to collect their dxdiag data (simply by typing "dxdiag" in their start menu and saving the profile, removing the Machine Name and Machine ID parts) and trying to get minidumps of their memory prior and after the issue using ProcDump (thanks to the guys from Microsoft for recommending this software to us)." We hope to have some results soon and will continue the pursuit for a solution. We once again apologize to anyone affected. Ensuring a more consistent game performance is and will remain our priority.

The number of entries in the #Armachinima Awards submissions is growing rapidly. Now that the deadline of February 13 is approaching, we would like to suggest everyone who is still looking to participate to submit their entries as soon as possible. We have found that it is not unusual for there to be some issues with entries, which might even require you to update the videos and re-submit. As such, sending us your video on the last day could be risky, and potentially lead to disqualification due to a lack of time for making adjustments. Specifically, we'd like to warn everyone to make sure that the music (and possible voice-overs) in your video is NOT copyrighted or that you have clear permission from the music's author (you are welcome to use the music from the official Arma soundtracks). In addition, the video must NOT be monetized on YouTube. We wish all video creators the best of luck in this final week. Public voting for 10 nominees starts on February 14th. Let's get the popcorn ready!

LOGISTICS

Bohemia Interactive's Server Monetization program, which allows server hosts to monetize their Arma 3 server(s) as long as they are registered, approved, and listed, has been extended for another year without any policy changes for Arma 3. The extended period expires on January 31st 2018. Be sure to read the FAQ section before applying.

It's unfortunately been awhile since our last update, but we've accomplished a lot during that time. With this update we have decided to split CWA (also known as Cold War RearmedÂ²) into its own package, separate from Core and Maps. CWA will use our new CUP-L license. After consultation with our contributors, we are also taking this opporunity to allow the use of CUP Terrains Core and Maps (not CWA) on servers that are approved by BI for monetization. We reiterate, you may ONLY use CUP Terrains Core and CUP Terrains Maps packages on monetized servers if you follow the rules of monetization and your server is on Bohemia Interactive's list of approved servers.

Google Drive, Armaholic, and SteamWS. PWS may follow shortly as well. You can find the links here on our website.